


Possibility

by Soozen



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, POV Katara (Avatar), Yue (Avatar)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 23:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30080223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soozen/pseuds/Soozen
Summary: Sokka isn't the only one who who stares at the moon and thinks of Yue.
Kudos: 7





	Possibility

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr.

Everyone knows Sokka stares at the moon.

Katara catches him, more often than they will ever acknowledge, lost in thought late at night. Sometimes he’s standing upright, or leaning against a tree, or seated, on a rock or his sleeping sack, or just the ground itself; his eyes turned upward. He is always silent; whatever he might be feeling is for him and him alone, and possibly Yue, if she is privilege to such thoughts. When it gets too late, he allows Katara to pull him back to camp, back to bed.

They never speak of it. Even Toph, without fully understanding, has the sense not to ask him about it. They all know, and they all give the required space.

None know that Katara stares at the moon- at Yue- as well. 

She is more subtle; but more often. From where she sleeps, through the flap in her tent, she keep the moon in her sight, and looks upon it every night. She struggles to understand why, why she is compelled at night to look upon the moon, even at its barest silver sliver, and think of Yue. 

Yue, who was her age and held herself with a grace Katara had never known existed. Yue, who loved her people dearly. Yue, who was soft-spoken and kind, and treated everyone around her with fairness and dignity. 

Yue, who saw what the world needed most, and did not think twice to give her life for it.

Katara thought she’d understood bravery before the siege against the Northern Water Tribe. Bravery is easy to place; it is her father off, fighting the Fire Nation. It is Aang, who never fails to do the right thing, even when it is difficult, impossible. It is Sokka, never failing to step forward and defend those in need. She even applies the label to herself at times; wasn’t it brave to allow herself to be imprisoned by the Fire Nation to save the earthbenders?

After Yue’s sacrifice, a sacrifice given so easily, so freely, as if she were not giving up her life and everything she had ever known, Katara has to rethink what bravery is. She thinks that, almost certainly, Yue is the bravest person she has ever met.

And she thinks of all the things that Yue could have been, if she had not found a larger calling, if she had not felt compelled to give her life to the moon spirit. Sometimes she wonders if Tui had known, all those years ago when Chief Arnook took his infant daughter to the Spirit Oasis, that they would be killed by Zhao, and that was the reason Yue had been blessed. 

It feels wrong to think such things. The moon spirit is to be respected and trusted in.

Still, she wishes that Yue could have seen more, could have done more, could have been more, but that feels wrong too. Because Yue became Tui, Yue became the moon spirit; how could she want for someone to be more than one of their most beloved spirits? In years and ages and retellings, she knows that it will be considered an honor, that Yue was able to do this and become this. 

But she wishes Yue had been given the chance to just be a teenage girl, and a young woman, a mother, a leader; a thousand other opportunities that she will never have. 

The more Katara thinks and looks and remembers, the sadder and more confused she gets. Yue, the girl and daughter of Chief Arnook, is to be mourned. But what of Yue, the moon spirit? Is it right to be sad about her? Or should she celebrate her?

Katara knows what Sokka would say. Sokka, who never cared much for spirits and bending and anything that cannot be explained by measurable data and facts, can only mourn both sides of Yue. 

But he doesn’t have the connection to the moon that Katara does. The moon spirit—Yue—is the reason Katara can bend. And every time she waterbends, she feels as if Yue might be there with her.


End file.
